How to easily have healers dps engaged ( yet another thread)

[Renathras]

Yes, altough a niche game, I LOVED Geomancer in FF Explorers. ...

Never played that game, but agree all around with your points on FFXIV and healing in general. I've played a number of MMOs, and while none are perfect, some do a better job of having healers kind of sub-spec into other roles. Everquest had healers that were sub-defined as being able to off-dps, off-buff, off-debuff. WoW had some healers a bit better at DPSing with some having more buff options. FFXI has several healer sub-specs (largely based on which secondary Job you pick for WHM and SCH, the two "actual healer" Jobs, though some others have managed to poke into healing from time to time, like RDM), where they can double down on healer or branch into buffing the party, debuffing the enemy, or flex into being decent at additional party damage.

We have 4 healing Jobs in FFXIV. The players make the meta all about damage (and everything being slapped with an Enrage mechanic kind of nudges that unhealthy direction along), but having a healer or two focused on something other than damage in their off-time would go a long way to making the role more diverse and interesting and really appeal to different player types.

AST already kind of flexes into that buffer role and has the weakest personal DPS, but it's also arguably the most complex of the healers, its buffs are a little random and wonky to use, and the aesthetic of a Tarot reader doesn't appeal to everyone. It's one of the reasons I argued for Chemist as the 4th healer, as it could have an off-buff focus role of short duration potion effects it could apply to allies via a Mix command that I think would have appealed a lot. The trick is to make the buffs as spamable as damage spells are now so the healer that does buffs can really feel like that's what they do when not actively healing.

EDIT:

1) 2) 3)

1) Eh...not from their lore. But I guess to each their own.

2) In what world does Art of War look like Holy 3? Adlo like Cure 2? Medica 2 like Succor? You have to squint REALLY hard before their abilities look alike.

3) It's about the player. I find MCH fun to play and BRD a headache because my brain doesn't track DoT timers well. On healers, my DoTs often fall off - probably for just a sec or two - but I have no idea how long. When I try to play BRD, I catch myself refreshing my DoTs when they have about 12-15 seconds on them (meaning my brain DOES do the 30 sec thing moderately well...), but then I'm playing BRD bad. But MCH I find easy. Metronome 1-2-3. I think this really comes down to taste. You may LOVE pressing one button every 29 seconds like clockwork and pressing the same 1 button over and over again for the 27.5 seconds in between. Me personally, I hate that and would much prefer a 1-2-3 I can hit over and over to have my animations change up a smidge and feel slightly more engaged but in a good way as opposed to the DoT, which is a bad way.

Also, no you didn't used to have to weave as much as now. We didn't have even half this many oGCDs in HW, I don't think, especially not on WHM. I think it was ShB when we went to having more oGCDs than GCDs. Part of that was making abilities force upgrade (e.g. Stone 1 -> Stone 2) cutting down on some of the GCDs that were redundant anyway, but we simply didn't have that many oGCDs. At the end of ARR, SCH had Atherflow, Lustrate, Sacred Soil, and Bane (AF spenders), and 4 Faerie abilities, 2 from each Faerie, and something else (was Shadow Flare oGCD? I genuinely don't recall...) vs Ruin, Ruin 2, Leeches, Physic, Adlo, Succor, Resurrection, Bio, Bio 2, and Miasma. And that's not counting cross-class spells. I believe the oGCD > GCD became a thing in ShB, though it might have been SB for SCH. For WHM, it was absolutely ShB.

I'm not opposed to SCH having DoTs, I'm just confused why a person would think DoTs are its lore (when the actual Job quests don't mention DoTs directly in any way I can think of) but that Faeries AREN'T part of their lore, when the Job quests REVOLVE around helping Lily get back her memories as the initial crux of the SCH lore the player is introduced to, and the lore continues this, going into how the Faeries were each tied to a different Job Stone, Amdapor kidnapping them, and so on and so forth. I just don't understand how you could NOT see Faeries as part of SCH lore when their lore is centered on them.

...and, for the record, if you read my posts again, you'd see I'm talking about healers collectively and DoTs, not just SCH. I even said (and have multiple times) with 4 healers, why not have a DoT one, a 1-2-3 one, a priority system (e.g. RDM Stone/Fire procs) one (probably SGE for that one), and a simple nuke spell, possibly with a second spell proc or single DoT. That's been my argument for a while. We have 4 healers, why must they all have identical DPS kits?

There's a fairly easy way to fix it: add MP cost to Toxikon.

Maybe, but then it becomes an optimization issue and arguably reduces the use case of Toxicon.

Edit:

And on the topic of dots: one advantage of them is, that if you have multiple dots on different timers, you have a constantly shifting rotation which I find far more engaging than a basic, generic 123 combo. And unlike cooldowns, there is also the option to refresh them earlier to take a lower dps loss than losing a full GCD.
Ideally they also offer something like Thundercloud proc or any form of interaction with the kit but even without that, 3 dots on different timers offer more engagement for me than a 123 combo where I can only ever press 2 after 1 and 3 after 2.
If we're talking about multiple branching combos like MNK had, then I'm down for it. It would need more buttons but constantly switching between branching combos would offer more variety for downtime as well.
It all boils down to breaking up monotony for me, anything that isn't easily predictable and rigid.

I think this mainly depends on the player.

When I'm doing DPS, I want it as close to rigid as possible. My mind doesn't work for DPS - that's why I play healers and occasionally tanks. If my brain worked well for complex DPS rotations, I'd be playing MNK. I like simple, and rigid means easy to keep my place in. As such, I far prefer a 1-2-3 static rotation to something bouncing all over the place.

In ShB, wanna know what my go-to DPS Job was?

SMN.

Yes, SMN.

Because say what you will about complexity, the Job was rigid in a 2 min window. There was a little flexibility, but it was STATIC flexibility. There weren't procs, the rotation didn't CHANGE. You had some instant casts and you needed to use 4 of them per 1 min cycle (and stock 4 for Bahamut in the back half of that cycle), but once you figured out fights, you could map them out to where you were always using them at the same place. Or you could Yolo it and press them for movement, with the caveat if you were within 15 sec of the next Trance, you'd blow through any you still had unless you wanted to get fancy with the log ping crazy-weave going into Firebird.

Point is, things that seem complex to some people can seem simple to others AND vice verse; things that seem easy to some may be complex to others.

Some of you like variability to prevent "boredom", some of us like consistency and a set pattern since it's for a thing we're being forced to do that we really don't even like doing anyway.

Everyone's different.

Again, it's why I think we should really flex us having four healers to address this - we could easily have both a multi-DoT rotation, no-DoT rigid rotation, a no-DoT proc/variable rotation, and a EW era nuke+DoT rotation. Having 4 healers means these four playstyles could coexist side by side by side by side, and players could then pick the one they like best from there.

The thing is though is that the healers as they stand are very badly designed for the combat system of XIV and no job should be subjected to 1 button being roughly 80% of their casting focus. It's just not healthy design. Every healer should be reworked to have a healthy library of GCD actions they rely on, and the undeniable truth of FFXIV's foundational design is that it does not require much healing even in some of the hardest fights in the game. So while not every healer needs to have a DPS focus, all of them need to be designed within respects to DPS contributions, hense the AST example I've vomited more than enough times on the forum rewarding buff usage with passive Malefic-potency damage. There still has to be restrictions on that system though, whether that be MP, cooldowns, or external resources like lilies, there can't just be free, unlimited healing that also deals as much damage as filler spells. Every healer will need to eventually return to some filler spell usage. There is a lot we can do to reduce that from 80% down to something far more manageable, but the healers can't just stay as they are if we ever want to see healthier design.

The problem with this argument is, it's you wanting everything to be EXACTLY like you want and you wanting to actively exclude anyone who plays different.

That'd be like a GNB main demanding all four tanks have a cartridge system and 1 min burst, or a BLM main demanding every dps Job have a DoT with procs and two phases of burn and regen that they shift between. No other role has all Jobs within it having an identical rotation. Why should healers?

Considering balance is ultimately just a matter of numbers, they could legitimately make all healers have the same DPS contributions if they wanted to based off of that. The only place it gets wonky is group buffs because if the DNC buffs a SAM vs buffing a MCH, the end result will be rather different.

And I'm not sure ONE healer staying as it is ISN'T healthy. Keep in mind that the problem is arguably that the healers are all identical. Meaning having 3 change and 1 remain the same would remove that problem and thus be an improvement. But if 3 changed to be exactly the same, or if all 4 changed to be the same, just different than the same that they are now, neither of those are particularly good "improvements".

AGAIN: We have FOUR healers.

Let's have them each be different.

To wit:

SCH began its identity as a healer that focused on DoT management and enfeebling enemies with debuffs that made them weaker with tools like Virus and Eye for an Eye and this was the core aspect of SCH's identity up until ShB. That's a playstyle many people enjoyed, myself included, and now it's gone and we're not allowed to play it. I think that's something that should've been respected, and if it's not a playstyle you enjoyed, then it probably wasn't the best job for you. It would be nice if each healer had their own unique styles, that way if one healer didn't appeal to you, there's a chance another might. And that's also why I hope we continue to see new healers in the future, even if they're released slowly. But that does of course imply that healers gain the freedom to have unique playstyles apart from one another.

THIS I actually agree with.

.

But this...not so much:

Absolutely incorrect. The Scholars of Nym were Arcanists to begin with, you can go to the Lodestone page for Scholar to read the blurb that says - "In an age long past, when mankind flourished under the radiance of arcane mastery, the island of Vylbrand was home to a city-state called Nym."
The link to ACN to SCH isn't in name alone, it's built into the lore and still is, regardless of you liking that or not. In fact, the original 1.0 lore for Arcanist was supposed to be centered around a plague - Las Vegas Fanfest 2014: “In Limsa Lominsa, the original Arcanist quest that was supposed to be released in 1.0 was actually about this disease spreading around La Noscea called the Green Rot. It would infect all of these people and they would die. To make money off of this, a bunch of merchants would try to smuggle in snake oils and tonics and things like that, and try to sell those to the people dying so they could get their money because they knew they were going to die anyway and were desperate."
Sound familiar? Seems almost like how Scholar's entire job questline and lore is dealing with plagues... so fitting for Miasma, Shadow Flare, Bane, etc to be apart of SCH's kit. Much more than Eos or Selene using attacks - something they have NEVER done.

If we're going to bring up the "lore" argument when it comes to gameplay, this is why wanting the fae gauge to have damage associated with it wouldn't work. "These learned men and women defended the freedom of their tiny nation with their unique command over spell-weaving faeries, utilizing the creatures' magicks to heal the wounded and bolster the strength of their allies." Outside of that, the faeries shouldn't have damage associated with them at all, because it throws Scholar's healing priority out of alignment when the faeries have always been Scholar's main source of totally free healing.



Scholar has not moved forward at all, it has been a continual worsening of the job. For every one good thing Scholar gets, it gets two good things taken away from it. I have no idea why you would think that something like SB SCH wouldn't be viable in today's content - is that based off of your experiences healing in Savage on SCH this tier?

Just a couple points:

"arcane" in this context means "magic". It's talking about the Fifth Era which was dominated by Mage nations, of which there were 12 that gradually whittled down to 3 - the Black Mage nation of Mhach ("'Mhach, Mhach, beware the dark! Stay away or lose your heart...' THAT Mhach?!"), the White Mage nation of Amdapor, and the Scholar/Marine nation of Nym. The age that ended in the "War of the Magi" and the Calamity of Water because of how overtapped out the magical reserves of the land were from all that magic being thrown around. That's what it means there, not "Arcanist".

The 1.0 lore that never was doesn't have much bearing on the 2.0 lore that is. The lore that they wanted to keep they kept, and the lore they didn't, they either retconned out or ignored so it would quietly go away. Moreover, "dealing with plagues" can mean "curing plagues". Doctors giving people vaccines so they don't die isn't the same thing as doctors spreading bioweapons. While the knowledge to cure a plague might include the ability to start one, that doesn't mean HEALERS trying to HEAL people suffering from a plague actively traffic in spreading plagues, either. That's like arguing doctors that treat gunshot wounds actively go out and get into gunfights with people on the daily.

I do agree that the Faeries shouldn't deal damage...directly. One could argue "bolster their allies" could include party damage buffs like haste or the like. Which is bad under the modern gearing/meta, but buffs that increase damage could fall under "bolster the strength of their allies" just fine.

And SCH has not "been a continual worsening of the job". I get that some people REALLY DON'T LIKE IT, but SCH is still the top of the healing game now as it was in SB. The Job has improved in quite a few ways. Whether the net result is positive or negative is subjective, not objective. It's far less clunky than HW/SB era SCH was, for example.

because literally nobody likes new SCH better than old SCH

I'm not sure you know what the definition of the word "literally" is.

Well strictly from a game design standpoint, the assets associated with Miasma (as well as Miasma II and Miasma III) and Shadowflare were made and still exist for use. That's not to say new abilities shouldn't be made, but if we're trying to restore SCH's identity as a more offensive healer, then why not use the tools already at their disposal? Because you specifically are not a fan of them? And I don't meant that to sound mean or harsh, but there's not a real reason as to why those tools don't work on SCH. And SCH's identity also included those spells. SCH's identity as an offensive DoT healer was defined by its combination of those spells and its barriers.

I think, if we really distill it, SCH is defined thus:

A healer who leverages their Faerie to assist them in combat and has a general command of defensive and healing magics, with some skill in offensive magics.

This is (minus the Faerie, I believe), also how FFXI SCH works (which...I believe was the more or less OG incarnation of the Job as the only one prior to it in the series was, what, FF3's?). I've only read about it, but FFXI's SCH basically has a light and dark stance for healing and damage, making it decent with both white and black magic. Basically like FFXIV RDM if PvE RDM played a smidge more like PvP RDM.

I also agree reusing existing assets isn't at terrible idea, but that's just for leveling. Broil IV isn't Ruin 6. Indeed, the Ruin spell-line DOES continue...for SMN...into Ruin 3 and 4. SCH's Job spells tend to all switch up the names anyway, and EVERY Job switches up animations. Even Dosis 3 doesn't look much like Dosis 1.

As far as her sass - she's responding to where someone told her she was probably playing the wrong Job earlier, I'd wager.

[Renathras]

Healers currently have the lowest job satisfaction, besides WHM they have the lowest player number and they regularly rank amongst surveys for “needs changing the most” plus they are most in demand role for duty finder and it’s not even close

If the game got bigger but the amount of healers either didn’t get bigger or got bigger at a smaller rate then it’s evidence that the role isn’t doing well and healers haven’t had a positive survey in years

Got any sources for this?

My personal experience and knowledge more matches this guy's statements:

Depends on datacenter though. PF healer slot fills faster than DPS in JP datacenter since patch 5.2. I've tested it even before the release of datacenter traveling.

Healers also have slower queue time in Duty Finder. Rare instant pop-ups. Usually have to wait around 3-5 minutes even with Healer-in-Need.

However, healer number seems to drop a little in Abyssos. My fellow healer-main raiders who run with randoms a lot concluded that some healers got scared away by those spicy dots in this raid tier.

Healers are disliked by some, but it doesn't seem there's been some mass exodus and groups aren't having trouble finding healers. So a lot of people seem at least satisfied with the current state of things. Healer ques are OFTEN near-instant, but no moreso than tank ques are (and generally less-so), the only exception being 24 mans due to the different party setup (1/2/5 instead of 2/2/4;1/1/2 ratio), and in those, DPS is often the AIN and quickest ques.

Healers ARE frequently in demand, but no moreso than SB, and less so than early ShB (when a lot of people complained initially about the role and left it, only to either later come back or be replaced by new people flocking to the role)

Again, I get that some of you don't like the current state of healers, but your anecdote isn't exactly data, and overall, healers aren't exactly in short supply overall in the game right now. It's definitely been worse in the past. Ironically, during the periods that many of you say we should go back to - HW for example healers had effectively instant ques all the time and were widely seen as a role in shortage. Tank is always the most short role (except during a VERY brief time in early ShB partly due to the disgruntled healers and partly due to a lot of DPSers trying Tank for the first time seriously in ques as GNB), but outside of that, it's been pretty consistent as it is now as the most shortage role, not healers.

EDIT:

My personal experience with PF is that the healer slots takes the longest to fill. Longer then tanks even. A quick look through PF right now shows me a ton of groups needing healers. So I have to wonder what your evidence is for "there are more players using healers now then ever" because it certainly doesn't match up with reality.

I find this a bit curious. EVERY PF I'm in (whether or not I start one as a healer), healers are often either the first slot or second to fill. Even at different times, they're rarely the last (that's consistently tank, and sometimes DPS). I often have to swap to my tank or DPS Job to get into PFs for a lot of stuff because the healer slots are already all taken.

The Problem is that from my experience, doing high end counted that requires optimization and class understanding on the part of the player is counter-intuitive to healer design, which punishes optimization with higher 1 button spam uptime and makes one grasp how not very exciting a majority of healing tools in this game are, especially since most healers have exactly the same with different mild flavors.

Exactly this, healing is more fun the less you know about high end healing because high end healing just shows the healing role is a complete mess, dungeon healing can be somewhat interesting if you get like a quad pull with an undergeared tank or your DPS all stand in stupid but raid healing is just horrid because all you do is spam broil

I think...a lot of you need to learn to grasp a concept:

No one speaks for everyone, and it's rare one person even speaks for a majority of like-minded people.

I see a LOT of comments like this, but I've literally never met a fellow healer that feels this way, nor do I. To many of us, we want to help our team, but don't want to be TOO stressed out, and would find 1 button spam "rewarding" not "punishing", and just getting to support our friends and clear content "fun" not...what you guys consider fun, which sounds terribly stressful and un-fun to a lot of us.

Now, everyone's different, and I don't claim to speak for a majority, either. But I think folks with your mindsets tend to vastly underestimate the number of healer players who don't think like you. It may be a meme, but many healer players really ARE like the Anime mmo healer characters where they don't think they're good enough and just want to be useful to their friends. That is legitimately a thing irl as well as in fiction. Not everyone fancies themselves the star player of the game, many just want to be a team player and help their team win, even if that means they aren't making all the game winning shots or on the cover of the Wheaties box.

I'm not saying it's wrong to do one or the other, I'm just saying you may vastly underestimate how many people DON'T like optimizing things to a T or having detailed "healing CD plans" for encounters and the like; people who don't find any of that fun at all.

[Supersnow845]

Got any sources for this?

My personal experience and knowledge more matches this guy's statements:



Healers are disliked by some, but it doesn't seem there's been some mass exodus and groups aren't having trouble finding healers. So a lot of people seem at least satisfied with the current state of things.

Here is the 5.25 job satisfaction survey

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...urvey_results/

A 5.0 one for JP

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...dark_red_most/

Current census data for capped classes with healers besides WHM at the bottom

https://ffxivcensus.com/#class

6.2 results for JP main classes

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...in_jobs_in_62/




The healers at best get middle of the pack for main jobs (which is biased by the fact that raids need healers), they always do extremely poorly on job satisfaction and never rank highly on pretty much anything

[Renathras]

COUPLE things:

1) 5.25? Got anything more recent? Like...ANYTHING from 6.0 or later on Job satisfaction? To put things into perspective, 5.25 was before Seat of Sacrifice. That's rather dated data.

2) The second one is even OLDER, and likely captures a lot of the SCH/AST players mad at losing DoTs/Cards but not the people who came in to fill the spots after they left NOR the people who returned to the Jobs after taking a break as a healer/tank. Again, got any current data on this? Also note that in that survey, WHM was #5 from the top, which is a pretty good spot. This seems more reflective of the knee-jerk reaction of 4.X SCH/ASTs, not an overall view of the role or healers in general. We need more current data than a full expansion and a half ago. Note the top of that thread "3 years ago". I know you might try to counter this with "Well, they haven't changed since then!", but they very much HAVE. And if that view WAS correct, surely 6.0/6.1/6.2 data would support it and should be available, right?

3) The number of tanks vs healers is ~3.4M vs 3.2M, which isn't exactly a massive difference, and, as has been noted, doesn't count alt Jobs (which unfortunately can work on both directions - I'm a healer main but have WAR, GNB, and SMN all at 600+). I should also note that both are higher than Ranged (2.5M) or Caster (2.6M), so even if we were going to use these numbers, the result would be that "popularity" goes Melee > Tanks > Healers > Caster > Ranged, wouldn't it?

4) The fourth one even has in the blurb right under it "It's an online fan poll so take with the usual grain of salt,".

Healers get middle of the pack, which is a pretty good spot to be in. Middle of the pack isn't bottom of the pack. Though you hit on something interesting at the end - if healers NEVER rank high on anything (e.g. for the entire game's history), then nothing has changed. That same argument could be used to say 3.X healing models were as bad or worse, could it not?

.

I would like to see some current data on this. Everything here seems to either be massively outdated OR, for the stuff that's current, shows that healers are in a decent/middling place. While no one fantasizes over being the "middle child", it's worse than being on the bottom. Right now, it seems Casters and Ranged have it worse.

But you might say that's only because they have fewer Job options. But by that token, Tanks/Healers being behind Melee fits under that same argument, and Tanks/Healers being approximately equal would indicate both roles are equally healthy (or unhealthy, as the case may be), and Tanks have had 4 longer than Healers have.

[T-Owl]

I also agree with buffing. I never understand HEALERS that want to DAMAGE. Healing is a support role.

Oh, actually that one is easy. You think you want that, but you really don't. Blizzard tried this model out back during Vanilla WoW with the Holy Paladin. Players hated it and felt miserable being basically nothing but buffbots. Being a pure supporter does sound more fun than it actually is.

I'm not saying it's wrong to do one or the other, I'm just saying you may vastly underestimate how many people DON'T like optimizing things to a T or having detailed "healing CD plans" for encounters and the like; people who don't find any of that fun at all.

So you basically want to be carried while contributing the least compared to other classes, who have to perform more complex rotations while at the same time doing boss mechanics.

Exactly this, healing is more fun the less you know about high end healing because high end healing just shows the healing role is a complete mess, dungeon healing can be somewhat interesting if you get like a quad pull with an undergeared tank or your DPS all stand in stupid but raid healing is just horrid because all you do is spam broil

I feel like these parties are kind of the minority though. In most cases dungeons are basically saying hi at the beginning, wall to wall pulling with no issue or drama outside of the occassional new healer and people if ever dying depending on whether or not they haven't done the content in a long while or not, because how the hell am I supposed to remember how Rabanastre works, that was 4 years ago. I also feel like the issue with Healers is, they get easier as they go and growing closer to the ceiling of near permanent dps uptime is not a matter of skill, its just understanding that your ogcd cooldowns are your basic healing ressource and your casts are your oh shit button, not the other way around. Understanding this makes healing fairly easy.

[Renathras]

Oh, actually that one is easy. You think you want that, but you really don't. Blizzard tried this model out back during Vanilla WoW with the Holy Paladin. Players hated it and felt miserable being basically nothing but buffbots. Being a pure supporter does sound more fun than it actually is.

There's an irony to you saying this - considering one thing we've learned is that when Blizzard Devs said "You think you want that, but you really don't", what we've seen pay out is that players did, in fact, want that. For years Devs said this about Classic, but Classic is arguably more popular than Retail. Moreover, keep in mind that Holy Paladins in OG Vanilla DID NOT HEAL. They didn't even get in combat. Their role was to stay OUT OF COMBAT and cast occasional buffs, which were something like one every 5 minutes.

Contrast that with a hypothetical AST that has Cards as GCDs with no CD and short duration buffs that they can cast as "filler" instead of Malefic. Are you seriously going to tell me that you'd find present day Maleficspam more enjoyable than buffing your party members with those GCDs instead? At the very least, the buffing would require more APM as you'd actually be targeting and applying the buffs to party members, which would already make it more engaging than Maleificspam, would it not?

Like if we changed literally nothing else about AST - still had the oGCD kit they have today, still have Combust, etc - just the only change was that Cards can now be spammed as your filler instead of pressing Malific over and over again as your filler. Are you seriously ready to argue that would be LESS engaging than Malefic spam during downtime/filler?

I'd seriously give AST a second look if this was the case since I find buffing party members to be much more engaging and fun in terms of class/role fantasy of being a supporter.

So you basically want to be carried while contributing the least compared to other classes, who have to perform more complex rotations while at the same time doing boss mechanics.

See this?

Don't do this again.

Ever.

(And you call me toxic and aggressive? Seriously: Don't do this again.)

There's a saying in the military: An army marches on its stomach. What this means is that without logistics, all wars are lost causes. Your argument here is essentially if you aren't a front line rifleman, you aren't contributing to the war effort and you aren't needed. Yet an army of only riflemen will lose every war. The fact you have a child's level of understanding of this topic is obvious, but if you press this button again, I'm going to be much more...direct...in slapping it down. This is thrice you've now done it, and Thrice Comes Ruin.

[Supersnow845]

snip.

Oh yeah I forgot about this since I ran out of daily posts

I’m legit impressed you managed to misinterpret every single piece of data I gave you in one shot, I’m kinda impressed, first point, the data might be a bit outdated but at least I have data, you have legit nothing but anecdotes and making posts so long people can’t be bothered replying to you

Second point I’m amazed that you, you know didn’t realise that if a major change is followed by the job satisfaction crashing for a job the change wasn’t popular, almost nobody who played healers at the time liked the changes and that data reflects it

Third point, why the hell are you adding those up, they include people who have more than one job at 90 so none of those bars can be added, fact is non WHM healers are some of the least popular classes to have at level 90

Fourth point yeah all survey data is online polls and unofficial, I’m amazed you somehow managed to both wave that poll off as being totally unofficial but also zeroed in on one of 4 polls saying the healers are “kinda okay” and then made your entire point that they are “kinda okay”

Nobody is saying you can’t like current healers but until you present some evidence they are popular rather than roundabout refutations to my data I’m pretty confident in my original point that the healer role is dying

[Renathras]

Oh yeah I forgot about this since I ran out of daily posts

I’m legit impressed you managed to misinterpret every single piece of data I gave you in one shot, I’m kinda impressed, first point, the data might be a bit outdated but at least I have data, you have legit nothing but anecdotes and making posts so long people can’t be bothered replying to you

Second point I’m amazed that you, you know didn’t realise that if a major change is followed by the job satisfaction crashing for a job the change wasn’t popular, almost nobody who played healers at the time liked the changes and that data reflects it

Third point, why the hell are you adding those up, they include people who have more than one job at 90 so none of those bars can be added, fact is non WHM healers are some of the least popular classes to have at level 90

Fourth point yeah all survey data is online polls and unofficial, I’m amazed you somehow managed to both wave that poll off as being totally unofficial but also zeroed in on one of 4 polls saying the healers are “kinda okay” and then made your entire point that they are “kinda okay”

Nobody is saying you can’t like current healers but until you present some evidence they are popular rather than roundabout refutations to my data I’m pretty confident in my original point that the healer role is dying

Where to begin?

Data that is old beyond a point (or when something significant has changed) isn't valid. It's not "at least I have data" if it's BAD data. Like after an election, you can't cite Presidential Approval (of the prior office holder who no longer is in office) as if it's the approval rating of the successor. There's a point where data becomes bad. Citing 5.0 data in 6.2 is bad data as so much has changed - despite you likely wanting to argue otherwise - which is why I asked if there was ANY 6.0 or later data you had (other than just the numbers of people with max level weapons)

I don't make posts "so long people can't be bothered replying". I cut the posts down and quote individual people so if they want to respond they can instead of making dozens of posts and clogging a thread that way.

EDIT:

On the second point - no, that doesn't mean the change wasn't popular. It means the change wasn't popular with PRIOR PLAYERS OF THAT JOB. That isn't the same argument as the change isn't popular WITH HEALERS AS A WHOLE or WITH THE PLAYERS AS A WHOLE, which is a separate argument. How do you determine that latter question? By doing what I said and having a survey once removed from the passions of the moment. That then will tell you if the changes were long-term unpopular. Remember how everyone hated Expedient seeing it in the Job trailer? If you took a poll on Expedient right after the Job trailer for Endwalker, the overwhelming view was it was trash, SCH was a dead Job, and SGE was going to be the most popular healer ever. Now we're in 6.2. How did that pan out? Expedient was so popular - and powerful - it had to be nerfed and people are talking about how SGE is the least played in high end content.

"why the hell are you adding those up"? Because it's the only way to meaningfully use the data! I'm sorry actually USING the data you provided disproves your point. YES, people have more than one Job at 90; which means you even posting the data is 100% meaningless. How many SMNs are SCH alts that are never played? How many people leveled a Melee Job just so they could do the Role Quests? Yet YOU presented that data as-is because you WANT it to say "look how unpopular healers are", completely ignoring the caveats you now are introducing to limit my critique of the data and my pointing out that, if anything, it says healers are actually fairly popular today AS A ROLE, which is what we're discussing, not individual Jobs.

Fourth point, I'm amazed at your ability to gaslight. I noted the problem with all the data you presented, but still in a "benefit of the doubt" way, chose to engage in it to actually show you why it doesn't support your position. Even the data YOU CITE says healers are "kinda okay", and your own post used the accurate phrase "middle of the pack". Middle is not bottom. Middle is not last. It isn't first, sure, but that's not what we're arguing. We're arguing if healing is horribly unpopular, "the healer role is dying", to use your words.

The data - YOUR data - clearly indicates it is very much not.

.

Again, as I've said before, hyperbole kills these discussions.

It's absolutely hyperbolic to say the healer role is dying, or is even the least popular in the game. It is absolutely hyperbolic to use extremely dated surveys that don't capture the current moods at all to make that case.

Healing may not be in the best place, but it's hardly in the worst, much less "dying". Indeed, subjectively by reading around the webs, it seems the Caster role is the one in most need of change, and the Job in the game in most dire straights is MCH. Criterion Dungeons (which don't allow combat raise) are going to quickly show SMN and RDM being underperformers since so much of their balance is based on them having a combat raise. And MCH is already doing fairly abysmally across various metrics. There's also a real fear that WAR may dominate the tanking scene in Criterions.

These are all upcoming major concerns, and some of them are reflective of current concerns (e.g. the SMN/RDM low damage numbers) as-is.

[Rilifane]

Maybe, but then it becomes an optimization issue and arguably reduces the use case of Toxicon.

And that would be worse how exactly?
We currently get 3 free stacks and then avoid the skill like the plague in a 10min fight. I never claimed it would fix all issues but if "too op" really is your only concern, I provided a very simple and very effective fix - limit it by MP cost that are too high to make it spammable. That's all. It would certainly be better than what we currently have and even offer a little bit of a skill ceiling. Having something to optimize isn't a bad thing.

[ty_taurus]

And that would be worse how exactly?
We currently get 3 free stacks and then avoid the skill like the plague in a 10min fight. I never claimed it would fix all issues but if "too op" really is your only concern, I provided a very simple and very effective fix - limit it by MP cost that are too high to make it spammable. That's all. It would certainly be better than what we currently have and even offer a little bit of a skill ceiling. Having something to optimize isn't a bad thing.

A really easy way to fix the issue with Toxikon while making SGE more fun to play would be firstly to either buff Toxikon to double Dosis potency or have it combo into another Dosis potency OGCD attack used right after Toxikon.

From there, simply reworking how Addersgall/Addersting are obtained slightly. Instead of generating normally over time, SGE gets a new DPS button that generates 1 Addersgall and 1 Addersting, has a 20 second cooldown on the GCD, and has 2 charges. Then whenever you activate Kardia healing, your gauge increases by 2. When your guage is 50 or higher, your next E. Diag or E. Prog grants 1 Addersting. The Addersting generation on E. Diag breaking is removed.

You get an extra button that now combos into Toxikon every 20 seconds, gain occasional value to using a GCD barrier heal, and have a bit more of a fluid gameplay loop. I still think more is needed to make SGE great, but that would be a really strong step forward.